Discuss: Educator's Kit

This is a central discussion topic for our Educator's Kit.

We last updated the kit in late 2021 to make it compatible with Stencyl 4.0/4.1 and fix up some inconsistencies/typos.

Use this topic to....

- Offer general feedback about the kit. (You can also reach out to us over e-mail)
- Ask questions about the kit.
- Share ideas / notes with other educators.
- Report problems with the kit.

Great work and thank you very much for publishing the guide!  I'm going to work on incorporating this into our coding club next semester.

One suggestion:
In Lesson1-TeachersGuide.pdf  (1-2) under Topic 4 it you mention: "Stencyl writes the code for you, so you don’t need to know how to code to create a game."  I've heard people say this before regarding programming in Scratch, but I think it undersells the power of the Scratch and Stencyl.  Block-based programming does obviate the need to type and reduces syntax errors, but the process of programming (coding) is still in place--breaking down a process into a logical set of logical instructions to accomplish a task.  Perhaps, saying something like: "Stencyl converts the blocks you use to actual computer code, so you don't need to type everything yourself.  You can even see and modify the actual code created by Stencyl." would still present the benefits without underselling Stencyl's power.

Indeed, that's actually how I've been wanting to sell this as - a way to escape the syntax but not the computing principles and problem solving required therein. I'll amend this in the next revision pass over the documents.

Hi Jon

We are evaluating running a programming courses for primary school students with stencyl, and we do intend to use Educators Kit for pilot program. Not only it's just a lesson material but it looks like a well though direction where we could aim our courses at, with proper balance on inspiration (making games!), big picture, playing with tools and actual learning to code.

I have some questions regarding the kit copyrights -
- Can we use modified version of that materials - at least we would need to translate Students Handouts (as we are based in Poland).
- Maybe you would like to provide source template  for the documents, so we could keep consistant with materials at your site, while providing students with version of our own.
- In case that you would indeed provide us with template, is it ok with using it to create our own materials?

Yes, you are encouraged to modify the materials and share those modifications with other users.

I've attached templates for the teacher's guides and activities, so you can format your derivative documents in a similar manner. Thanks!

Many thanks Jon!

I'm an IT instructor with my company Husky Logic, as well as a Home School teacher.  My son's home school co op would like to learn programing using Stencyl, but the place we gather, does not have wifi.  What they asked was if I could record video lessons and post them to my youtube channel for the home school students to do at home and discuss during class time. 

Are there any TOS rules that would prevent me from recording these videos using the lesson plans in the kit?

No restrictions on that use case. I bet that a bunch of teachers out there would love to see these videos shared.

Thanks Jon,  When I get them done, I will be sure the share the playlist.

Hi,

I am actually not a professional coder nor a teacher but a web project developer (with some coding skills though ;-) ).
I showed stencyl half a year ago to my 12 year old daughter who made a very nice game with it (a sort of puzzle game, all done herself - the idea, the grafics, the coding, etc.. I just helped debugging and gave her advice which steps are reasonalble to manage a project like that). Now I volunteered to do a project at the school of my daughter in Austria in which i will help 14 year old kids making their own games/apps. We have about 10 to 15 lessons/hours to do so. I find the eucator's kid very usefull though I will have to  shorten/adjust the matrial a bit so that it doesn't take longer than about 3 hours to make the kids stencyl users.
I will give you some feedback when we are finished.
Thank you for your work and best regards,

Gabriel

The "project 1 solution" file seems to have a bug.  When I run it, the player character falls through the floor and dies repeatedly. Please advise.

Check the collision boxes on the player and the tileset.

Hi, I'm going to be teaching stencyl as part of a holiday course for the school I work at. I have downloaded the educator's kit and imported the projects, but project 1 has an issue with the tileset where each row of tiles is offset by a few pixels in the tilseset editor and the scene editor, to the point where the the tiles that are meant to be in row 19 are almost completely in row 18. I am using the most recent version of stencyl and the tilesets in the other projects don't have this problem.

I have attached a screenshot of the tileset in question and the scene editor, the platform in the air is using the proper edge and corner tiles even though the bottom edge isn't showing.

I have moved on to the other lessions since the tileset editor bug isn't going to ruin the course, but whenever I try to run any of the other projects in the educator's kit I get this error:

[lime.utils.Assets] ERROR: There is no IMAGE asset with an ID of "assets/graphics/3x/tileset-31.png"
   at lime.utils::Log$/error()
   at lime.utils::Assets$/getAsset()
   at lime.utils::Assets$/getImage()
   at openfl.utils::Assets$/getBitmapData()
   at com.stencyl.utils::Assets$/getBitmapData()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\utils\Assets.hx:28]
   at com.stencyl.models.scene::Tileset/loadGraphics()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\models\scene\Tileset.hx:138]
   at com.stencyl.io::TilesetReader/read()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\io\TilesetReader.hx:49]
   at com.stencyl::Data/readResource()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\Data.hx:272]
   at com.stencyl::Data/loadResourceFromMbs()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\Data.hx:216]
   at com.stencyl.utils::LazyIntMap/get()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\utils\LazyIntMap.hx:51]
   at com.stencyl.models::Scene/readRawLayer()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\models\Scene.hx:553]
   at com.stencyl.models::Scene/readRawLayers()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\models\Scene.hx:510]
   at com.stencyl.models::Scene/load()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\models\Scene.hx:143]
   at com.stencyl::Engine/loadScene()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\Engine.hx:996]
   at com.stencyl::Engine/begin()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\Engine.hx:944]
   at com.stencyl::Engine()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\com\stencyl\Engine.hx:733]
   at Universal/preloaderComplete()[C:\Program Files (x86)\Stencyl\plaf\haxe\lib\stencyl\1,00\Universal.hx:408]
   at lime.app::_Event_Void_Void/dispatch()
   at scripts::StencylPreloader/unload()[C:\Users\Llewelyn\AppData\Roaming\Stencyl\stencylworks\games-generated\project4\Source\scripts\StencylPreloader.hx:340]
   at scripts::StencylPreloader/onLoaded()[C:\Users\Llewelyn\AppData\Roaming\Stencyl\stencylworks\games-generated\project4\Source\scripts\StencylPreloader.hx:309]
   at lime.app::_Event_Void_Void/dispatch()
   at lime.utils::Preloader/start()
   at lime.utils::Preloader/updateProgress()
   at lime.utils::Preloader/current_onEnter()

Hi Ibyrd2,

Both of the issues you've run into are bugs that may occur in the process of opening older games (like the Education Kit projects) in version 4.0.1 of Stencyl. We've already fixed both of these bugs, but we haven't made a new public release since then, so the bug fixes are only available in our subscribers-only private releases at the moment. We'll likely make a new public release within the next month.

In the meantime, I'll either go through the Education Kit samples and update them to the 4.0.1 format, or create a patch for the current public release of Stencyl that includes the fixes.